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“Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s real.  It never does with dreams.”

Tim Tharp

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“The past doesn’t need you anymore. Your future does.”

some Tumblr advice

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“Science fiction has a long and valuable history of providing us with visions of a better world. …[But] Science fiction since the Sixties has signally failed in that regard; we have been fed, by and large, a diet of Chicken Little soup in a pot of message, ladled out over leg of Frankenstein.”

Storrs Hall

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After I argued that we need to envision how to build toward utopian ideas rather than attempt to fend off dystopian futures and suggested technological dystopian thinking wasn’t particularly helpful, an acquaintance of mine sent me “The Usborne Book of the Future.” I scribbled some thoughts and then Theo Priestley offered up this piece: Polyfuturism.

So, let’s talk about science fiction and scanning future scenarios.

This is where I believe science fiction can play an invaluable role, but:

• Science is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.
• Science fiction is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.

Science is a process of learning and discovery, and sometimes we learn that what we thought was right is wrong. Science and science fiction and fantasy do not predict the future yet, on occasion, they can offer plausible narratives for what could be as well as offer some reflection on what is. On my side in this discussion, Michio Kaku encourages all of us to think about science fiction and fantasy and future possibilities through the eyes of physics. He often says the laws of physics, as far as we can tell, do not rule things out, just makes suggestions on what could be possible. But possible does not always mean feasible. And maybe that’s the interesting thing about quantum physics. It suggests possible paths of existence all circling back onto itself never really going backwards in time and yet affecting the time continuum. It suggests the universe is made-up of multiple stories. In fact, in relativity, now only exists in a frame of reference not as an absolute. Yeah. Time and space may appear as an unchanging multi-dimensional block within which we call the present, it is interesting to maybe think about time and space as contextual, never stagnant, and constantly changing second by second. All that said. The future should always be viewed as a world of possibilities where the good things we desire can be imagined. Far too often science fiction, and futurism, dwells on

(a) the negative possible outcomes, or

(b) an extension of the present amplified.

Weird, huh? If you believe science fiction is a way to imagine how the world will be different and to help make sense of the future, well, why wouldn’t we seek to envision the hopeful possibilities?

Which leads me to how “extension of the present” amplifies less-than-useful possibilities.

I would argue seeing, let alone understanding, the significance of most events in the present is dubious at best because there are too many spiraling indirect consequences within the myriad of conflicting competing interests. This includes both threats and opportunities. That said. Being passive is not an option while being active guarantees nothing. So what I suggest is that rather than seek to extend the present you should seek out the ‘power’ you have, i.e., the power applicable in a wide range of contexts, and seek to maintain this power/control at the lowest cost possible. I would even argue that protecting the power you have is almost survival 101 (albeit it’s not directly translatable to thrivable 101). The tricky part of that is if you tether things too tightly to the present (which is simply a different way of embracing the past), you are doomed. Doomed because connectedness will prevail over any one thing you have deemed ‘important.’ What I mean by that is any one thing, in today’s world, is never discrete, it is always connected in wildly complex intricate ways with other things. What I mean is the bad things are so embedded within the weave of things you can’t simply shed them by extending the present. Heck. I could even quote Goldratt’s ‘the race’ and point out that simply eliminating one thing creates another equal, if not worse, issue. The truthy is extending the present simply means you get the bad with the good and the bad, more often than not, is gravity. Gravity that drags the future down every time the future seeks to fly. Look. There exists in all of us a tendency to think of the present as the appearance of how things will be in the future. We pride ourselves on our decisions in the present. We believe we’ve considered all the available options and think that the current decisions we’ve made seem rational, right, and proper — but that’s a trap. We all find it difficult to think of reasons why we might change the ways in which we do things today, how our habits will develop or how our attitudes and preferences might evolve, but change inevitably happens, and it’s undoubtedly coming. Or, as Toffler said, ’the future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.”

“If we are called on to not fear the future, it might be better to persuade us that we have a place in it, that it is ours to make. Show us a future we want to believe in.”

Michael Harris

Businesswoman changing reality of drought to spring season

Look. Any future thinking typically demands a reference point as kind of an anchor for thinking. What this means is we need to rummage around history to be able to look ahead more effectively. In doing so it helps us understand the trajectory and choices made in the past which got us where we are. In other words, how did we create the present we are in? There is no way to escape the present if you don’t know how you got trapped in it. As a corollary, it also helps to rummage around science fiction and fantasy for future anchor possibilities. What I am discussing is foresight versus forecasting. Foresight has a long view and is speculative; forecasting uses data to extrapolate what may likely come next. One is possibilities the other is probabilities. Pick your poison carefully, but, simplistically, you cannot go wrong if you seek to improve the quality of the present so that it can exist in the future; not predict the future because it is always out of reach. Why? Prediction is as much a way of thinking and how we craft facts to build from moreso than any high falutin technique. And that matters because it all shapes our perceptions of what is ‘inevitable,’ and, as a consequence, what kinds of futures are considered ‘plausible’. That said. Whether you’re looking at the past, present, or future, you’re always seeking the dimensions of change the space and time within which things occur. In 2020 Gaya Herrington said amidst global slowdown and risks of depressed future growth potential from climate change, social unrest, and geopolitical instability, to name a few, responsible leaders faced the possibility that growth will be limited in the future. And only a fool keeps chasing an impossibility. I would argue that you aren’t chasing impossibilities, you are changing possibilities over a range of probabilities some of which were increasingly unlikely and others increasingly likely.

“Technological optimism means to practice the ability to recognize bad surprises early enough to do something about them.’

Edward Tenner

Which leads me to technology can be both gravity and wings for the future.

The present is burdened by existing myths, narratives, and institutional system structures. People (culture & society) are caught in the wretched hollow in between the reality that science and technology do not provide a philosophy, or human framework, by which to live or the belief structure of society. Sure. It is impossible to not embrace all that science and technology has to offer and, yet, they are bereft of any moral construct within which to build a better future. In that, culture, and society, get squeezed in this conflict.

“The very basic core of a human’s living spirit is its passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Christopher McCandless

Circling back to the topic at hand, the future of technology and science, the foundation of all science fiction and futuristic fantasy, is profoundly dependent upon humans and their understanding of the future. This understanding needs to be grounded in shared values, shared what is valued,’ shared sense of how to create value, and shared sensemaking of what is valued (note: Zak Stein discusses “what we value” really well). This will span political, economic, societal, community and legal structures. And while the future certainly will be reliant upon technology in some form or fashion, it would be a mistake to shape future thinking solely based on simplistic techno-optimistic people captivated by fantastical thinking because, inevitably, most of this thinking doesn’t think about the fabric of society within which those things will be woven. We need futures crafted through science and technology ‘by and for humans’ with an eye toward humanity’s progress and prosperity. And maybe that is where I end this section. Because both science fiction and fantasy may not design a future state, they certainly have optimistic scenarios to lead us to inquire “how we can we craft a future like that.” And isn’t that half the battle?

“They used to say if man could fly, he’d have wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That’s like saying you wish that you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great-grandfather used to. I’m in command. I could order this. But I’m not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this. But I must point out that the possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great. Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what the starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

Captain James T. Kirk from the episode Return to Tomorrow

Which leads me to no specific future is a given (or inevitable).

First. So how do we get, pragmatically, to the future? Oddly I will not highlight innovations or ‘original thinking,’ but rather, uhm, half invented ideas. Half-invented ideas is a Nassim Taleb thought. The reality is science fiction is simply a narrative of half invented ideas. They are mostly ideas which can be partially attained; therefore, the future is more about taking the time to explore how to attain the half-invented idea. It is through that process in which objectives are attained. I argue for half-invented ideas because progress is always making (and even moreso today) knowledge, energy and resources more and more inexpensive, accessible and abundant. I would even argue that a half-invented idea addresses civilization’s most challenging obstacle – short term thinking. A half-invented idea gives you a running start toward the future. It is much easier to stay ‘on mission’ if you are editing rather than creating from scratch. Ponder.

Second. So how do we envision a future? Science fiction is, well, science fiction. It’s a narrative that expands the imagination of what could be.

“It is now in our capacity to destroy civilization as we know it, or to build a world of unprecedented opportunity for all people.”

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Science fiction stories also play an important role in challenging the basic truth that most people tend to extrapolate from the status quo to envision some predetermined future, i.e., a bounded vision. It is bounded by the constraints and suppositions of dominant perceptions of reality of which science fiction pushes against. The truth is there is no single “future” let alone one single trajectory, but rather an array of possibilities and paths. This happens because the future is continuously shaped by our actions as well as our inactions. That’s why I think the sharpest people speak of ‘futures’ and not just ‘the future.’  There is a spectrum of future possibilities — the probable, possible, plausible, the desirable. Science fiction and fantasy expand our understanding of the possibility spaces of tomorrow’s choices and, therefore, choices of what future we shape. But. Nothing is inevitable; even narratives. Once again, science fiction offers possibilities. This is an important thought because the best futurist thinking embraces the unresolved and the things that have yet to be well defined. They offer vague shapes of what could be and propositions seeking clarity, i.e., structures yet to be designed.  Circling back to the beginning, as I read Theo Priestly’s piece about futurists and Futurism, I was reminded that he was reprising a concern that Alvin Toffler, probably the original contemporary futurist, had. Toffler lamented that his idea of futurists was being diverted by a focus on the present in likely futures. He was concerned that the objectives were limiting the possibilities of Futurism. Ultimately, he believed that futurism shouldn’t focus too much on identifying likely futures, but rather should be exploring ‘the less likely but the impactful’ possible futures. In my words looking to the future should be about designing a future scenario within which people can see themselves within and therefore start redesigning their own lives to be able to not only fit into it but to build it person by person. That is easier said than done because the thing about the future is past narratives trap our future thoughts. We seem to forget is that some of the biggest transformations occur when problems and crises arise because they tend to create a perfect space in which to explore valuable futures. And with that let me quote Heather Vessent: “who gets to decide what is positive and what is dystopia?” The future always resides in “human needs solutions” not technological capabilities. Simplistically, this means we ground things in human needs – significance, connection, love, progress, contribution, meaning, and not from ‘optimal functionalities’ of a technological widget (which means we can do things only in the way that the widget suggests). This means that the technocrats view of considering solutions from a technological capability perspective with human needs as secondary is fraught with peril. The peril resides in that all of these solutions best fit the present rather than redesigning or potentially redesigning a future. And while the technocrats may claim that technology is the engine for progress what I actually described is almost like putting a governor on progress. We may see some short-term productivity increases, but long term all it does is continue to bound existing behavior and attitudes rather than looking towards the horizon for new attitudes and behaviors.

Which leads me to “eyes up” thinking and doing.

We all know that walking looking down at your feet means it is only a matter of time before you run into something. The trick is always seeing ahead while not losing sight of where your feet actually get placed.

“Ideas, unless outward circumstances conspire with them, have in general no very rapid or immediate efficacy in human affairs; and the most favourable outwards circumstances may pass by, or remain inoperative, for want of ideas suitable to the conjuncture. But when the right circumstances and the right ideas meet, the effect is seldom slow in manifesting itself.”

John Stuart Mill

Oh. That said. “Seeing” or “scanning” is a daily task – and a daily task better done by a team than any one individual. “Seeing” seeks out reference points and signals of change in the present offering cues to ideas for the future. Yeah. And this is where rather than discussing innovation I bring up ‘half-invented ideas’ again. These signals should be bucketed into ‘opportunistic positive’ signals and ‘dangerous dystopian’ signals. In other words, investigate and interrogate the things that seem to put boundaries on future progress or even future death – for the greater world AND the half-invented ideas themselves. But what this means is we need to consider what the futures could be and more importantly what the world could be like in which a half-invented idea would prosper or wither away. Thinking of it all this way is important because we cannot imagine the future trajectories of every organization, of every idea, of every community, of every economy, of every country, let alone of every person, or even of any half-invented idea, but we can certainly craft a world all of those things could exist within. In other words, create a fictional future within which all of those things can thrive and prosper and you’ve identified something to be able to fully-invent half-invented ideas toward.

Which leads me to identifying stories.

Stories always play a role in the looking toward the future. Science fiction stories thrive in this scenario, but not all stories are created equal and there are science fiction stories of the past, stories of the present, and stories of the future. Stories of the future are speculative fiction, but valuable nonetheless. But all of the stories are important because they activate our brain, and then we share the story, it actually synchronizes an aspect of a collective sensemaking brain.  can become even more powerful when shared. For when we come together to listen to a story our brains start to synchronize with those of the person telling us the story. From there we are off to the deeper motives, desires, imagination, perspectives races. And that mental race is the fundamental underpinning of building a better future.

“If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”

Kurt Lewin

People must be able to envision a better future in order to make the choices to craft it. That takes some work as well as some imagination. And here is where I end, with a thought from Theodore Roosevelt: “reformers will be assailed on the one side by the reactionary, and on the other by that type of bubble reformer who is only anxious to go to extremes, and who always gets angry when he is asked what practical results he can show. The true reformer must study hard and work patiently.” Toffler took that thought a step farther in Future Shock suggesting we needed to train people to think as futurists – all people. Society needs imagination doors to walk through and science fiction and fantasy tend to be the builders of those doors – for all people. Ponder.

“For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others. In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored.”

Alvin Toffler

“For wildlife to engage in the business of living, species need to be able to move across the landscape.”

Invented Boundaries, Anthropology News

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“I don’t really care about stuff, but it isn’t really about stuff is it? No. It generally isn’t about the stuff. Even When it is. And even when the motivator is greed. Really just about having. Marking out your territory, making it bigger and bigger, and giving yourself more corners to put your stake in the ground as though more and bigger will protect you from, well, the sense that you can’t really control anything. So maybe more is what protects you from the lack of control.”

SJ Rozan

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“Organizations are goal directed, boundary maintaining, and socially constructed systems of human activity.”

Howard Aldrich, sociologist

I almost called this machine and the machine in a technology world, but let me begin with ‘invented boundaries.’ The first time I stumbled into this thought was in Donella Meadows ‘Thinking in Systems.’ Dumbing down her brilliance, basically she suggests a complex system has no real boundaries and we, people, create them in order to make sense of the system (or the situation). Conceptually, this is a really important thought. This means most boundaries are imaginary, not concrete solid structures, to create controlled spaces for humans as protection (or a means to find enough certainty about something to ‘do’ something) against “uncontrollable factors,” or, as a weapon against human’s natural imagination and freedom to explore. Either way, it is an attempt to create some definition in a human world within a world which actually defies simple definition. We are surrounded by boundaries. Rules, process, hierarchy, class/caste, playgrounds, fences, pick your environment and I can find you a constraint or boundary. Maybe I am talking about what Robert Ardrey suggested in ‘The Territorial Imperative’ – territoriality as the power of things to impose their own assumption of time and space by means of our sensory involvement in them. All of this gets compounded by whether the boundaries are set by, and for, humans or technology (the machines). I would argue business, in particular, is crafting boundaries and constraints as dictated by machines/technology rather than humans. From there we are off to the “so what do we expect once we have established the boundaries/constraints” races. That said. If there was ever an example of the territorial imperative, I struggle to find a more relevant boundary than growth.

Which leads me to growth (and scale).

Growth is one of business’s territorial imperatives. Yeah. If you buy what I just said, invented boundaries limit growth. That doesn’t mean growth cannot occur, just that because it is bounded, you will never really know how high is up. Interestingly, this also is true of power. The growth of power is less about the machine or technology itself, but rather how it is used and wielded by the will of the institution (and those in power). That said. ‘The machine’ represents a kind of warped ideal that institutions use to guide tangible output objectives. This has consequences. The main one is that is the machine has created a non-human operating context in an environment populated by humans. People live in bounded conditions that, while may not be less-than-human, are certainly not at optimal humanity. This ultimately creates a disaffection from our senses leaving a general sense of being unsatisfied, as a human, all the time. And this is mainly because machines and technology craft invented boundaries around the social aspects of people – the networks and connections. What I mean by that is machines and technology have augmented our ability to ‘distribute’ thoughts, ideas, social connections and a variety of things that add value in the marketplace of people and business. In fact, as Metcalfe’s Law states: “as the number of people involved in any communications technology increases, there is exponential growth in the amount of communication paths.” This is known as the network effect and it has both good and bad properties. It is fairly clear in the not-so-distant future AI will help us make all kinds of decisions. Despite technology’s potential for good, it also has an equal potential to affect people and society in not-as-good ways. Maybe worse, technology and machines can be wielded by those in power to manipulate all those things (and constrain them as they see fit). It may sound simplistic, but if we can invent some boundaries and navigate the technologies between the benefits it can bring and the challenges it can create, society will benefit. Often the challenges get showcased in books, movies and media in ways that often can make the negatives seem exponentially stronger than any technology positives brought to bear. And then we look at business in general as business, focusing on ‘maximize the return on investment’ as it does, will implement things not with the good of society in mind, even as a sub objective, but rather to meet some specific business objectives. Add on to that how business views humans and connectivity as ‘social machines’ to be built and optimized and you begin seeing how humans ger screwed in this bounded world crafted for them. I bring this up because the technology of the future will allow powerful networks of people to coordinate efforts for effective decision-making, matching people to those who can help solve the most challenging problems or exploit the exponential opportunities and even crafting governance (constraints) to complex competitive environments. What I mean by this is we are quickly moving towards a time where it will be possible to use technology to create and use people, as social machines – passive recipients with aggressive intent – created by institutions (the owners of the technology) to produce specific results. Uhm. That’s directed behavior within a bounded environment. This shapes ‘humans to technology’ rather than ‘technology/machine shaped to humans’ ultimately creating a fundamental incapacity to organize people. Yeah. I just said that (despite all the claims technology makes about increasing human potential). I say that because technical/technology imperfections demand technical/technology solutions in this scenario and while humans are demanded to operate the ‘machine’ they do so even if the natural sense/rhythm of humans doesn’t really align with the rules of the automation/technology. The human/machine becomes a weird less-than-optimal interaction between machine and human within some invented boundary.

This gets a bit worse. When things go wrong in an invented boundary space, instead of un-inventing the boundary we try and fix what is within. How? Through machine-like processes. We want to restore meaning and unity and patch together that which machines have stripped. Yet. The only way we seem to do it is through technical means – process, initiatives, tracking, etc. to fix it we seek to make behaviors and attitudes an object of ‘human processes’. Once again, the process imposes a technical solution. Oddly the solution can indeed restore some semblance of meaning and purpose and unity but only by virtue of total integration of the people INTO the process/system which originally produced the issues. We see the ’human issues’ as symptoms of people incomplete of the machine system. Problems are symptoms of people just not being in sync (or ‘complete’ with the system) rather than the system not well designed for optimal human performance.   What this means is to achieve the goals we actually mean to complete the process (make the system whole). Yes. We seek to modify humans (behaviors, attitudes) to ‘fix them’ so the system (process) will work the ‘way they are supposed to.” Ponder that as you think through how many times you have heard or even said) “if they would only do this.” I believe it was Jacque Ellul who said “such persons may exist, but it is probable that the ‘joyous robot’ has not yet been born.” In this ‘man versus machine’ world all processes are related to everything. This machine mentality, the machine (processes are always the right way things should be done) means we continuously ask, and assess, people to compensate for the disagreeable components, and consequences, of the system. Typically, businesses do this by isolating different components (specific activity) to ‘fix’ those consequences. Once again, in this scenario humans, and their natural instincts for work and craftmanship, doesn’t really have a presence except to the degree the individual is subject to economic conditions and to the degree that mechanical conditions permit means for which processes can be exercised UPON the humans. The truth is a focus on efficiency (which every business has whether they accept it or not) creates a conflict between human operational acceptance and operational application on humans. Every human process has some version of a designed, circumscribed, sphere of action and none of them ever really match either the human’s actual skills nor their potential. So even though a business may be ‘human-centric’ it is actually a relatively impersonal technical operation when viewed this way. How do I know? Well. Pick a person off the street and the process will never work on them. From a meta narrative perspective, this is determinism, not freedom. It is a psychological war in which the individual must be engaged because the environment/context does not create conditions for the natural will of the individual. Processes have devolved to technical procedures, not traditional thinking, its evolution (exponential) is too rapid for new traditions of thinking (which undergird attitudes and behaviors) to take hold therefore thinking – and norms/principles/etc. – simply holds on for dear life to a technological world running wild. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that when process is embedded into every aspect of life, including society and community itself, it ceases to be an external stimulus and actually becomes part of each individual’s substance (way of being). The machine is no longer ‘used’ by humans, but absorbed by and has ultimately absorbed in some ways, humans. This gets even worse. The machine represents the ideal toward which ‘techno social’ (or techno productivity) strives so that ideal becomes, well, how people measure life. Machines may have begun the war on humans, but technology is going to win that war.

“Social growth was formerly reflective or instinctive, that is to say, unconscious. But new circumstances (the machine) now compel us to recognize a kind of social development that is rational, intelligent and conscious. We may ask ourselves whether this is the beginning not only of the era of spatially finite world, but also of the era of a conscious world.”

Henri Guitton

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“Machines sanctioned social inefficiency.”

Lewis Mumford

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“Humans are not adapted to the world of steel; process adapts him to it.”

Jacques Ellul

Which leads me to people & humanness.

Today’s work demands different qualities in a person none really that beneficial to the mental health of the person. It subjects everyone to a very similar way of life, tends to put everyone in the same ‘working bucket,’ puts everyone in similar invented boundaries, and actually threatens/rewards everyone the same way. Working people now work, generally speaking, in a constant state of tension, mental pressure, spiritual absence (meaning, not religion) and a system which almost demands a level of submission (to the institution as well as to “the way things are done in a machine/technology growth system). By being involved and committed to the machine system most people simply then seek ways to contrive support for the system. Worse? Exceptional becomes less of a human quality and more of ‘working the system exceptionally well.” How boring is that shit? So, people go home and into the community emptied of humanity by the machine system and, uhm, what do they talk about? In a business world in which technology creates a world in which almost everything works well, or at least well enough, it diminishes substantive human conversations of life, home, family, etc. and increases a focus on the subconscious hollowness where technology, tinged with fear, anguish, despair seeps into anything that could be positively meaningful. Well. That was a painful sentence to write.

Which leads me to Marshal Durbin on cognitive anthropology in 1973: “Culture is best seen as an asset of control mechanisms – plans, recipes, rules, instructions, which are the principal bases for the specificity of behavior and are essential conditions for governing it.”

I buy that there are some organizing principles underlying cultural behavior and I buy that those principles offer some boundaries or constraints for ‘normal accepted behavior,’ but I chafe on ‘control mechanisms.’ Well. Let me say this. I do not believe culture she be viewed as a control mechanism, but businesses, and institutions in general, are infamous for using culture to attain power thru authority and defining what ‘best’ is; so ‘worst’ can be isolated. Or, circling back to an earlier point, the institution wants to manipulate the malleableness of culture. Institution power seeks to do so because culture is an open system, not a closed system (and those in power hate that). What I mean by that is people are consistently ambiguous and vague and it is extremely difficult to understand what people are thinking when they make up their minds to do something. Therefore, if humans are in a constant mental flux the culture itself is a bit malleable. Uhm. Malleable demands control, or boundaries, in the eyes of any business institution; i.e., time to invent a boundary.

Which leads me to speed.

Speed is violent. Therefore, speed is an enemy of boundaries – invented or not. Maybe I could add that speed is also at war with “humanness,” i.e., the boundaries of what humans can handle. Maybe think about this like car racing – either on a closed track (an oval) or an open track (road race). Each have boundaries, limits, constraints, and effective speed exists within the limits and balancing of technology, humans and nature. Beyond that, the easiest example of this is ubiquitous information. The immediacy of information immediately creates the crisis in reasoning power thereby squeezing and reducing the size of the action so that the action matches the squeezing of time as the field of action. The small bounded space increases the power of almost anyone. An individual with a computer or even a single bot can lead to a speedy catastrophic chain of events. in addition, speed encourages us to ignore the threat of information proliferation and the speed of that proliferation allows any irresponsible individual to borrow or own a piece of that information, at speed, and elevate it beyond any boundaries that everyone else may desire to have in place. This, in turn, creates social conflict between those who seek to preserve a principled ecosystem (some do so to protect their smaller community domain and some do so to protect larger society). This also becomes a conflict of rivalries between information. What I mean by that is that a social group can establish a boundary within which it contains certain information and as the speed increases around that boundary conflict arises as information bombards it. The speed of all this creates a sense of futility. In fact, within the violence of speed, humanity actually stops being diverse in its sense of futility and will, as a consequence, fragments into hopeful communities and despairing communities (and everything inbewteen). That thought is a derivative of a Paul Verilio thought. Anyway. The other way to think about this is using Stewart Brand’s Pace Layering. The outer circle is speed – violently buffeting life, minds, and attention. The inner circle, nature, is the slower cadence of behaviors and habits. Speed is constantly attacking culture and psychological and behavioral insights that give us our natural rhythm. The speed is unnatural, and therein lies the conflicts between the boundaries.

Which leads me to “in the box” effective navigation.

Of course we need to slow down a bit, maybe festina lente, but there are aspects of complexity, even within boundaries, which are important. The truth is there are linear, causal, aspects within complex systems. Maybe call them fractals or maybe call them constraints (gates to be opened). Goldratt explained constraints (Theory of Constraints) and business and people ignore what he outlined decades ago. I say this to suggest probabilities, predictions and scaling are often dependent upon how successfully one can identify constraints and seek out the fractals, linear gateways, the connections, that unlock potential and opportunities.

• ** note: the structure of networks tied to the systems within an organization matters toward meeting productive ends objectives

Yeah. High falutin’ theory or not, everything is about connections. Connections between parts of a system as well as connection between, and of, people. The boundaries help us define the connections and clarity of connections leads to effective navigation.

“AI (algorithms) doesn’t know that human beings exist at all. From the algorithm’s point of view, each person is simply a click history.”

Professor Stuart Russell

The truth is the technology is destabilizing to many connections because they stretch existing systems & the ways of thinking. As we’ve seen time and time again technology has a noticeable effect on our social economic and societal institutions. This creates a dramatic shift in the locus of power which affects what happens within the boundaries of the system. What I mean by that is it all may feel like chaos, but it is simply power applied against limited powerful in a rigid invented boundary (within which the powerless have nowhere to go). That said. Without the power brokers who attempt to control outcomes, especially within boundaries, humans naturally converge, not because of processes, but as natural dynamics of a system and human nature. People naturally pursue progress that is visible which begets, well, infinite energy and intrinsic power. This is called operational freedom. If done through process, it is operational totalitarianism. To be clear, some boundaries are important because the more vague the outlines, the more we tend to design processes, and the less freedom we will actually have (even in an open system). That may sound a bit counterintuitive, but systems have both function and purpose, not Purpose, but purpose. It can simply be growth with the ‘how’ left up to the system and the people operating the system.

Which leads me to gamification.

“How” is rarely left up to the people operating the system. In fact. “The system”, more often than not, will manipulate people to operate the system the way the system powerbrokers want them to operate it, i. in comes gamification. Gamification, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. I actually created an online early education learning platform grounded in gamification. Most online game are grounded in gamification., i.e., fail just often enough to learn how to navigate to the next level (progress). My friend Dr Jason Fox wrote a fabulous book on business gamification called “the game changer.” He offers a wonderful section on something called contextual momentum. ‘It is an outline of how people and organizations can gain some balance between specific goals and open possibilities while still making progress.’ Gamification at its best helps someone manage for the right things at the right level where ultimately the motivation is progress more than some simple short-term races to some specific milestone. Alas. To our mutual dismay both Jason and I watched as the power brokers of the system began to use gamification to invent boundaries to, well, game the operating system. Oh. And game people. Therein lies several problems (outcomewise as well as moralwise). Suffice it to say gamification focuses on parameters to change things and, yet, there is not a lot of leverage in parameters. They are constraints, not expanders. That is not to say parameters aren’t important as things which can set the stage for all the things to come, but they are not ‘the thing’. The truth about gamification is that the structure of the system influences behavior and the structure of the situation influences decisions. It is all related. Parameters only provide some constraints or boundaries for how we view situations (either limits or offers expansion opportunities).

And maybe that is where I will end.

All boundaries, invented or otherwise, influence how we view situations. We are what we see. We do because of what we think we see. Choose your boundaries wisely. Some may actually be cages.

Ponder.

—–

“Some of it, you really want to unlearn.”

Keith Richards

==

Not everything you learn is valuable. Ok. Maybe I should say not everything you learn is infinitely valuable. What I mean by that is that some things you learn have a finite value in terms of longevity. They are valuable in the present, but lose value either (a) over time or (b) suddenly when you learn something else. That said. The value may remain in its value as a stepping stone to new learning.

Which leads me to unlearning.

New learning, or unlearning, call it what you want, it’s the key to thinking and enlightenment progress. Generally speaking, it’s the idea that there is a time limit on some things you learn, spans everything. I have even suggested that principles can have an end date. That said. Conceptually speaking all information is dated. What I mean by that is that context new learning new information constantly bludgeons a piece of information as soon as it exists. Yet it is lazy to simply suggest that a piece of information is not useful simply because of its timestamp. Some information is simply more resilient than others. Therefore, the trick to unlearning is being able to recognize what learning should remain and what learning should be unlearned. Look. I am a learning guy. A curiosity guy. A guy who believes you can never learn too much as well as you never stop learning. I also believe learning shit is not just about accumulation. And that may actually be a bigger thought than anything else I babble about. If it isn’t about accumulating, that means you have to get rid of some stuff. Downsize as it were. Unlearn in other words. Maybe think of it the way American University does: ‘unlearning is breaking down the traditional way of thinking and teaching critical thinking methodology.’ They actually call it “a year of disorientation.” But ultimately, I would imagine I am speaking of the study of thinking (I hate to call it critical thinking). Not free thought, but simple down and dirty tearing apart the thought fabric to see how a thought is sewn or woven together. Far too often we seem to put value on accumulating knowledge. Number of degrees. Number of books read. Number of things experienced. The addition to what goes into your pea like brain. Rarely do we discuss the subtraction. The things you shed as you learn something new. The deconstruction of what we know. And maybe we should. This is not about ‘we only have so much room in our brains to store up information’ but rather ‘what I have learned has made me change my mind, my opinion, my attitude, my belief, my whatever.”

• Truth, in Life, can be unequivocal.
• Truth, in one’s mind, is contextual.

What I just wrote may be aggravating, if not uncomfortable, to people. I think most people like to accumulate learning as a sign of personal growth <and public acknowledgement of ‘enhancement.’

But accumulators can be blowhards.

And accumulators can be pretentious.

And accumulators can become fanatical.

And accumulators can become a menace to real learning.

—

“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.”

Daniel J. Boorstin

—

“The hardest decision in life is to decide what matters.”

I believe learning is addition thru subtraction. I tend to believe great learning is about, well, gaining 2 things and losing 1 thing.

Which leads me to suggest Keith Richard certainly shouldn’t be anyone’s role model for learning or accumulating knowledge.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t say something smart and insightful on occasion. Being enlightened is not only about accumulating learning. In fact, it is maybe more about unlearning shit as you learn new shit.

Shedding some guard rails and boundaries and ‘what I knows.’ Recognizing that not all things learned are created equal and that some things actually lose value as you gain other things.

Think about how what you know may actually be decreasing in its value every day.

Think about halting that decrease by simultaneously adding new learning and subtracting some old learning.

Think about constantly learning as much as you can and unlearning some things along the way.

Think about the fact learning is not just about accumulation, it is also about ‘decluttering.’

And.

Think about the fact there are some things you really want to unlearn.

Ponder.

==

“All mythologies become outdated as the concept of goodness keeps evolving. Every ‘good’ of a particular time becomes ‘evil’ as time changes.”
Awdhesh Singh

==

“Just because outdated ideas are persistent, doesn’t mean they aren’t poisonous.”
Steve Maraboli

==

I sometimes believe I could have a second career writing about Donald J Trump. Almost everything that I wrote in 2015 and 2016 in my attempt to warn everybody on who Donald Trump was as a person and his appeal to voters has proven to be true. I sometimes believe now that when I write about Trump I am simply repeating over and over the same things I said almost 9 years ago. Conman, a grifter, a pathological liar, speaks the language of victimization, resentment and ‘old school’ benevolent dictatorship leadership power bullshit. But at the core of who and what he is remains someone stuck in the 1970’s. He has a 70’s vision of the world, he has a 70’s attitude, and he has a 70’s business acumen. And all of it circles the scummy drain of a zero-sum world belief. Unfortunately, a lot of this appeals to a certain group of people and touches some chords of what people think.

A 56 percent majority of Trump voters say that if a national media outlet reported that Trump said something untrue, they would be more inclined to believe him than the news outlet.

Which leads me to say that suggesting Trump has an ideology is nuts.

He has a personal opinion and view of the world. Simplistically, it is stuck in the 1970’s wrapped up in a fatty bacon filled wrap of I-centered zero-sum attitude. To be clear. Not all zero-sum worlds are the same and an “I-centered” zero-sum view is especially different. What I mean by that is viewing the world as a competition of winners and losers is a bit different than seeing oneself as ‘me against the world.’ The latter is a bit narcissistic as well as a bit fatalistic. And what I mean by fatalistic is that the individual in this case tends to begin thinking it is a game of survival, not just simply winning and losing. And when that happens, well, it becomes a world view and shifts from simply narcissistic to anarchistic. But back to I-centered. The I-centered zero-sum attitude sometimes comes to life as a victim of the entire world therefore the world is always suppressing someone’s ‘brilliance.’ Or it can come to life in terms of a simplistic win or lose mentality. Either way it is ‘I against the world’ and the world is always wrong and the I is always right. This usually gets compounded by a meritocracy attitude wherein the “I” certainly has the merit, therefore, the only reason the “I” doesn’t get what is merited him is because the world is conspiring against him.  Therefore, the “I” is always fighting against the injustice and the injustices the world is inflicting upon the “I.” That is Trump in a nutshell. Trump doesn’t really care if his I-view world is reflective of what will benefit everyone else, it simply suggests if it is good for him, it is good for everyone else. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is a singularly horrible point of view for a president to have, but he projects his personal view onto a fairly large swath of people who believe the same.

Which leads me to the business ideology of the 1970’s: zero-sum.

1970’s business was strewn with ‘dog eat dog’, ‘big fish eat little fish’ and ‘it’s a war’ competitive mindset (kill or be killed). It was horribly unhealthy and made humanity zero-sum. In other words, business was hollowed out by a bunch of white men with a zero-sum attitude. There were only winners and losers and profit/wealth trumped ethics and morals. The best of the horrible leaders were known as benevolent dictators and the worst were simply pathologically stripped of empathy, compassion and the greater good.

Which leads me to the 1970’s strain of politics that had cult-like qualities.

Let me first say that one of the business principles of the 1970’s was a binary “be loved or be hated, but don’t be in the middle.” If one were to fully embrace this thinking than one would strive for cult-like status. From there you are off to the ‘what extreme things do I have to say to have people come to my cult campfire’ races. There lies the lesson of Pat Buchanan. Buchanan referred to leaders like Hitler as “an individual of great courage,” and “longed for a kind of internationalism rooted in those small towns and conservative values and in whiteness, whether in the U.S. or in Serbia or Russia or South Africa or elsewhere (Heilbrunn).” For Trump it was narrative gold. A stance with sharp edges to inflame and inflate American conservative support supported by a smallish network of non-ideological people driven solely by money and power.

Which leads me to a transactional worldview.

So, once yu have embraced the ‘winners/losers’ mentality and a political cult narrative objective, if all you do is think transactionally, a nationalist point of view becomes easy. The world simply becomes a menu of transactions to do or not do (with zero sum being the filter for all). This also eliminates the more complex transnational agreements because, well, it is too difficult to assess whether you are “the” winner or simply a loser (and that can’t fit into a simplistic narrative). The Trump world-view is transactional bilateralism, hostile to traditional globalization thinking and free trade/market, cloaked in a rhetoric-driven ‘America First’ world-view. Don’t believe me? He cut ties with almost every transnational agreement (and would have added NATO to the list but it was useful to his ‘us versus them’ narrative).

In doing all of this Trump shows he has no desire to be transformational or even to shape the future, he favors only transactional relationships dealing on the basis of cost–benefit calculations as to how each deal works in America’s perceived economic or political interests.

From there we are off to the 70’s mentality races. Smokestack industries churning out raw materials for building shit. “If you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country!” Trump once tweeted. He dreams of the days when United States possessed almost half the world’s manufacturing capacity, the majority of its food supplies, nearly all of its capital reserves and an unparalleled military power. He ignores the political and leadership aspect, of creating a world order of which the US was the hub, and sees individual aspects as the tools of power to do whatever he wanted. Strategic alliances and institutional multilateralism was only for those who didn’t have enough power to be THE “I” in a zero-sum world.

And this is where he puts victimization and resentment to work. Services have risen from 47% of gross domestic product in 1948 to 69% today; at the expense of making shit. It cost people jobs and careers despite the fact the country gained significantly more widespread prosperity and economic power. This isn’t the result of any government policy (even NAFTA). It’s just the way modern economies evolve. As the economy becomes more productive, generating more wealth, capital naturally flows to activities that earn the highest return. This also means more mature industries, fighting to maintain margins and profits, will migrate to developing countries where production and labor costs.

My real point here is that people are always the victims of capitalism and the pursuit of profits and they should resent that, but it matters who and what you resent. Trump, leaning into his 70’s mentality, will use that victimization and resentment to feed a false-ish “us versus them” narrative (and he never offers any real solutions). Look. There’s nothing wrong with championing the traditional industries of old. But it’s wrong to do so to protect those industries at the expense of others, which is what Trump does.

• ** note: Analysis by the nonprofit group Trade Partnership says Trump’s protective tariffs would boost steel and aluminum employment by about 33,000 jobs. But they’d kill 179,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, because of the higher prices manufacturers of cars, appliances, industrial equipment and many other things would face. That’s a net loss of 146,000 jobs—before accounting for retaliatory measures enacted by other countries that would hurt U.S. exports to other countries and further dent production.

With childlike simplicity, Trump wants products purchased in America to be made in America. He doesn’t seem to care about supply-chain efficiencies, low prices for consumers or the autocratic nature of telling companies how and where to direct their capital. His 70’s view just cannot accommodate a more globalized world (which actually increases American prosperity). But the worst aspect of his non-thinking is his embrace of 70’s industry at the expense of future looking investments in future-necessary industries. Once again, there is nothing wrong with supporting old technology, but not at the expense of EVs, solar/wind energy, nuclear energy and whatever else the tech industry has up their sleeves.

Which leads me to Trump’s weird view of globalism.

The Trump ‘empire’ spans the globe. He is a ‘globalist.’ That said. Trump’s view of globalization is not a normal transnational business person’s thinking about globalization. He thinks about it, as he does about everything, in a very transactional way. The global economy may be interconnected in a variety of ways between countries, but he never looks at it as a complex weave like a web of possibilities but instead as a simplistic series of small linear transactions which get a assessed in a win/lose way. It’s simplistic, it’s flawed, and dangerous – at least if you were worried about the future prosperity of the United States.

To be clear. The cost to maintain its global leadership status are rising, and there is a slow relative decline of central importance, but the US remains in a structurally advantaged leadership position.

The truth is, despite Trump’s view of things, US’s global grand strategy of deep engagement continues to make sense and maintains leverage globally.

“Current year is too late to care about current thing.”

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey

Which leads me to the worst king of wishful thinking ever.

The reality is wishful thinking never creates the future we need or even want. The best Trump can do is try to resurrect past wishful thinking because he cannot even envision a future other than what he remembers in the 1970’s. As a side note, probably the worst problem for society and the United States is that no politician can actually articulate a better vision than his 70’s idiocy. What this all means is that it does not allow us to comprehend an increasingly complex present nor does it allow us to start shaping the course for a better future. Trump doesn’t help us understand why some things happen at certain moments rather than others which creates an environment almost impossible for people to be able to see the steps that are necessary to be able to get to a better future. At his worst his wishful thinking is deferring our future. This doesn’t mean that some of his words don’t resonate. When he says the system is rigged, there is a truth to that. And it’s not just that some people are benefiting more than others, but there’s actually a growing swath of public services which seem to increasingly not be meeting everyday needs. We could point out a number of reasons why, but Trump doesn’t care about solving anything, he just cares about ginning up the resentment and the increasing the senses of the everyday person that the entire system appears to be rigged against them. Solutions exist, but Trump doesn’t care or the answers are simply too complex for him to grasp. And this is where his wishful thinking makes it worse. His past-driven wishful thinking encourages his cult of likeminded thinkers to constantly diminish the ideas, that are actually being well produced and innovations for a better future, to be diminished blow-by-blow under the guise of these ideas are not scalable. This diminishing effort suffocates imagination for what the future could be therefore the only solution resides in the past. Conveniently to the ones enticed by him and his narrative, Trump, in his 70s-ism, offers something which seems comfortable, but is just wishful thinking. And here is the odd thing. Populism, at its core, is a version of politics that challenges prevailing common sense in managing the economy. That is a good thing. But economic populism is different than national identity populism. The latter wraps itself in a flag and some nebulous idea of social national identity while the former demands real solutions crafted to the benefit of the population and not the elite. Look. There is a version of populism in which it is the people who will invent the future and not seek to resurrect the past, but that is not Trump’s populism. Trump’s vacuous nihilism is reflective of many of the Uber wealthy and dwells in unhealthy transactional ideas which not only defer the future, but actually increase the likelihood that we will never attain a better future.

Look. People will argue with me, but I struggle to identify one thing that Trump believes in, let alone anything his administration did, that bettered the country and its people for the future. I can certainly point to transactional elements or segments of the population who benefited in the present, but, once again, I struggle to find any one thing that betters the future.

“To paraphrase someone smarter than me, who still knows nothing, the philosophical task of our age is for each of us to decide what it means to be a successful human being.

I don’t know the answer to that, but I would like to find out.”

James Othmer <from the book ‘The Futurist’>

To be clear. None of what I’ve shared isn’t to suggest the existing system is perfect, but destruction of the system, and USA central role, is clearly not to the benefit of America’s future.

In the end, Trump embraces a warped 70’s vision of America, its good and bad, and wraps it in delusional word salad of lies. While he builds flimsy houses from splinters of facts, most of what he says is insanely ignorant wishful thinking. He is a grifter, a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, an autocrat wannabe, a racist, misogynistic (or even anti-feminism), and a liar. He has no ideology other than himself. He is a small person, mentally and intellectually weak, insecure, angry with a lust for vengeance and retribution. He is the worst of 70’s business mentality – the same mentality which put business into an amoral shithole and is aiming to put the USA into an amoral shithole. Ponder.

==

“In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all sorts of industries under way- nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find, and I kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts – experts in every sort of handy work and scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats. Unsuspected by this dark land I had the civilization of the 19^th century booming under its very nose!”

Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court

==

“It’s not about how long you stay in a place, it’s about what you do while you’re there and, when you go, is that place any better for you having been there.”

Chris on Northern Exposure

==

For a race of people who seem to relentlessly pursue ‘living in the now’ and maximizing pleasure in the present, we are surely an unhappy group. It should make many of us wonder why.

From a meta perspective, one could argue that our ideal is incompatible with industrial progress and industrialization. From a mesa perspective, it could simply be the constant friction between the ideal and reality. So, let’s stick with the latter for a moment. There is a reality of progress and that is, well, its relentless energy constantly grinds against the present reality. That constant grinding is a reflection of the tension of people relentlessly holding on to ‘some vision of the ideal’ despite all the signs and warnings reality continuously gives us. This oddly seems to feed a sense of powerlessness. As reality becomes more and more obvious the freefall from the heights of the ideal to the material reality is horrifying. And yet day in and day out we look around at a rude, restless, world and continuously try and replace it with polite order and machines hoping to force reality to reflect more our ideal. Unfortunately, our world is an intricate semi-organized urban/rural/industrial/agricultural society of which the machinery of its collective existence encourages us to have an image of humankind in the grip of uncontrollable forces. Once again, we are faced with another conflict of reality. Industrialization, once associated with movement and noise, has entered another phase of industrialization, technology, but one in which eliminates all evidence of any of the frenzied chaotic movement and clamor that we have always associated with industrialization. Once again the silence is horrifying and yet wherever there is noise we begin believing there must be a problem – quite the paradox. Maybe worse is that this silent machine simultaneously works against our dreams and simultaneously enables our dreams which creates even more tension/conflict. I’d suggest this is a battle between reality and imagination, progress and the ideal. And throughout, humans being generally an optimistic bunch, we hold on to the simple-minded notion that everything can be right again and can be made right again. We work harder and harder to fix things that we just can’t put a finger on. As we work, we grab onto a temporary feeling of relief that maybe we were on the path to some solution and the hope of a lasting possibility. The ideal can never be let go no matter how harsh reality suggests we should let go. It is almost like The Great Gatsby when Nick says “Gatsby did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night.” And maybe that is where living in the now runs into the most issues. The imagined versus reality. Or continuous efforts to banish facts in order to maintain faith in the ideal. It is the relentless tug of the possibility which simply makes optimizing the present so difficult.

Solving this, making “that place better for you having been there,’ is harder than one may think because the fact is that humans depend on filtering out a certain amount of things in order to make sense of the environment, i.e., where they are. We boil things down so that we feel safe. We reduce things to some version of ‘perceived best certainty’ (which does not equate to “better for having been there”). In addition, it is a basic principle that people generally fear what they do not know, but, in particular, we fear the perfidiousness of other people. All of those things ‘reduce’ the space we are in, reduce the present, and reduce any chance of bettering the space for someone following. Reduction should not dominate the space as we define it.

Which leads me to social cohesion.

Because these things dominate the definition of our space, we will typically gravitate towards who we know and what we know and, well, staying in place. To be clear, part and pieces of that are good, but we need to acknowledge the need for some boundaries in social cohesion. That being said even the boundaries which we erect for the safety of who and what we are should be permeable boundaries. What I mean by that is the boundaries have an infinite amount of doors in and out. And this is where the present comes crashing into the conversation. For if you have ideals and yet you are trying to maximize the present who owns the right of the space or the time or even the present, who even owns the doors? For it is within the space where the ideal becomes inherently social and not individualistic. And this is where “better for having you there” resides, for ‘you’ is not an individual but rather a collective. It is this space in which maximizing the present and reaching for the ideal is always about all about keeping a balance between what is built and what is grown, the architect and the gardener. Negotiation, compromise, genuine empathy, in an embrace of other people and their ideas all of which creates a daily testing of boundaries among people. Sure, there will always be tension between private benefit and common good, but social cohesion exists because of a meaningful and moral intent for progress and it is actually progress, not inertia, which promotes a sustainable social identity. Some of this may sound silly in the crazy hectic nonstop 24/7 world that we live in. But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that loneliness is not just the absence of meaning, but just as much can be found in the absence of company. What I mean by this is that you can feel alone on an empty street just as you can feel alone on a crowded street with busy people going here and there. Yeah. With no social connection we find ourselves in a bubble of isolation even when surrounded by people. To be clear, connection is simply the first step toward community and collective good, but without it there is no community or collective good. Anway. It is at this point it’s quite possible that someone seeks meaning by trying to maximize the present – as an individual. That is simply a fool’s errand and it does not really offer a true path to “making that place better for you having been there.” Once again, without connection one can never truly maximize a situation nor do they improve their chances of moving any closer to the ideal nor do they really have an opportunity to make where they are better for being there.

Which leads me to what is “under your very nose.”

The truth is the design of life always embraces a larger, more complicated and complex, order of experience than simply living in the now, i.e., in the place you are. And while making most of the present certainly does need design – a larger structure of thought and feeling – that thought and feeling should embrace an ideal of, well, the future. That may sound contrary to what I was suggesting earlier, but maybe having an ideal in mind is the key to making the most of where you are, with what you have, and who you are with. Maybe that’s true because where you are is of the time, of the mind, of the body, and of the connections to some community which, in some form or fashion, has an eye on the future. Think about that a bit because reality should not cause alienation to the ideal, in fact all reality should do is make possibilities gather up its pragmatism friends as the engine for progress toward those possibilities. For it is within that time and space in which energy is converted into action, positively affecting the environment to propel us, collectively, toward progress and the ideal. My point here is that we should never divest ourselves of the ideal, just as we should never divest ourselves of reality, and maybe that is the point. In order to live in the present, you must use reality to edge ever so closer to the ideal. Day in and day out, small step or large step, and ‘maximizing a place’, edging closer and closer to your ideal. It is quite possible I am suggesting a life within which you never reach a desired destination, but maybe that’s what making the present world just a little bit better for whomever may follow behind is all about. So that maybe they could possibly reach the ideal destination. Ponder.

“want to be remembered just as someone who did whatever she could, with whatever limited talent she had, to move society along in the direction I would like it to be for my children and grandchildren.”

RBG

===

“Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another. The role of ordinary people in such transformation is not that of initiators or principal actors, but as followers and supporters of one elite or another.”

Pareto

“a conspiracy of an easily located set of villains”

Wright Mills

Anyone who reads pieces I write know I am generally optimistic about technology and its future. So let me begin by recommending a podcast with Jim Pethokoukis and Marc Andreessen which was conducted after Andreessen’s ‘the techno-optimist manifesto’ was published. I recommend it because while I chafed at lots of the written manifesto, and still disagree with many points, listening to Marc discuss it softens it up a bit and fleshes out some of the thinking that is not always possible to communicate in writing. I encourage everyone to read the companion piece to this one, a discussion on technocrats, because my biggest concern with Marc, and other technology people like him, is he makes some very scary things – things with massive existential risks – sound incredibly reasonable.

That said. Tucked into the podcast is a short section where Marc discusses ‘elites’ and ‘masses.’ It’s a bit jarring to hear “elites” particularly when it is discussed in terms of “the people who influence the decisions for the masses.” Both words, elites, and masses, are burdened with a number of negative halo perceptions. So today I discuss the concept of circulation of elite.

Which leads me to Pareto’s “circulation of elites.”

The circulation of elites is defined by the process whereby the ability to govern and the powers of government lie in the same hands as well as that process which allows for the expression of social interests within the elite circles. The circulation of elites theory is grounded in a belief that people are unequal intellectually and morally and the more gifted, those who are most capable in any particular grouping, are the elite.

“By elite, we mean the small number of individuals who, in each sphere of activity, have succeeded and have arrived at a higher echelon in the professional hierarchy.”

It was Emory S. Bogardus who said:

“The theory of elite is that in every society there are people who possess in a marked degree, the qualities of intelligence, character, skill, capacity, whatever kind, that there are two classes of elite, that the two groups are disjunctive at any given time, that there is an up and down circulation of elite.”

Circulation, or upward and downward circulation amongst the members of the elite and non-elite, is a typical characteristic of an ongoing cycle of social change. That said. Very few individuals may join the ranks of elites from the non-elite groups. And a few elites may become non-elite members of society. In a fair economic system, heck, a fair system in general, there should be a constant and free circulation of elites. Unfortunately, the circulation of elites is seldom ideally free or unimpeded. In fact, typically the only time a vast change in elites occurs is either through revolution or war. Despite that, as Pareto suggested, it is true that a steady flow of elite into vital positions enhances a stable society that does develop and progress – just not optimally.

“History is the grave-yard of Aristocracy.”

Pareto

The cycle of history plays a really important role in that small ‘circulation’ of elites I mentioned earlier. It suggests an existing elite emerges, dominates, falls into decadence and falls in power to be replaced by new elites who have had disdain for the decadence or seek power with their new wealth. But, once again, most of the circulation of elites is on the edges – small percentages highlighted to create the perception of ‘movement.’  Certainly, some non-elite, by their merit, may rise to the level of elite and, of course, on rare occasions revolution overturns the elite class, but for the most part elites stay elite.

‘By the circulations of elites, “the governing elite is in a state of continuous and slow transformation. It flows like a river, and what it is today is different from what it was yesterday. Every so often, there are sudden and violent disturbances. The river floods and breaks its banks. Then afterwards, the new governing elite resume again and slow process of self-transformation. The river returns to its bed and once more flows freely on.”

Pareto

Which leads me to how circulation is managed and limited.

Control and power is easier if you control and have power over the everyday population’s (masses) perceptions of what the system is and should be. To be clear, perception isn’t reality. Reality is reality. That said if the Elites can shape a perception, which encourages most of the people to generate a reality close enough to that perception, control can be maintained. What I mean by this is elites establish images of the system that prepare the people for their own particular conditions within which they will survive or thrive. Elites shape reality in a number of ways, through numbers, through imagery, through words, all with the intent to generate enough success for the masses so their position can be maintained.  This is a bit easier than one may think because reality is unlikely to be as we believe it to be. Which means that we approach everything with just a bit of skepticism because its never exactly how we wish it could be (or believe it should be) therefore begin thinking there is something wrong – just not with us or our own view. This leads the everyday person to begin questioning data/information which doesn’t support the perceived reality and that leads the everyday person to give up on science or rational thinking and embrace some dubious non empirical speculative thinking. This is bad (but elites take advantage of) because it is rational thinking, in particular, which helps us understand things about ourselves and our relation to the world. But possibly the most important image elites foster is one of safety. When the societal imagery is crafted well the Elites are seen as the safety net for the entire circus. The masses become dependent upon the Elites for a level of thinking. What this means is that the everyday person offloads some of the really important shit for a number of very good reasons and yet it will inevitably decrease learning among the masses of everyday people themselves. It is a structure and a system of dependency or somewhere there is some powerful leader or group of Elites who exist to ensure that no catastrophic events follow as a consequence of the irresponsibility of certain individuals. This entire perception driven system encourages all of the everyday people to assume someone else, never them of course, is stupid and likely to do irresponsible things and it is the elite who ensures that ‘stupidity and irresponsibility does not affect me as an individual.’ Ultimately this means that the majority of people mirror the system that they are placed within. That is basically how the elites embed control.

Which leads me to elites as a concept.

No matter how one decides to discuss ‘elites’ it has a nasty taste to it. For the most part we think of them as a group of people who believe they are smarter, more capable, and “more,” than the majority of society. Simplistically, partially true, and partially false, elites are the few who have the power and the majority are the many who do not have power to ‘pull the levers’ of policy and governance and business. This power decides who gets what, when, and how as well as the participation in the decisions that allocate things to society. They are the few who participate in the decisions that shape our lives while the majority of people are the many whose lives are shaped by institutions, events and the elites. Now. An elite group is not some conspiracy cabal desiring to oppress or exploit the masses. The reality is many elite decision makers may actually care about the welfare of the majority, but, they do so with an eye toward maintaining their own status and power and wealth. Regardless of theyir attitudes, we are stuck with them governing. This may chafe, but the reality is they possess more control over more resources and more information and knowledge of the processes then everyday people (note: this doesn’t mean an increasing amount of everyday schmucks think they are as qualified as the decisionmakers). This isn’t to suggest a well-organized, well informed, mass of non-elites can’t seek some control, but the truth is the majority of Americans are relatively apathetic and ill-informed about politics and public policy and, if we are honest, they have a surprisingly weak commitment to the freedoms that would actually give them power. What this means is that the critical element for the health of society (and a country) consists of the beliefs, standards, and competence of elites. This would also suggest that if society issues arc toward indecision, disaster, and crisis, the responsibility rests with the elite, not the majority, to find the solutions. This doesn’t mean the ‘masses’ never have any impact on the attitude of Elites, but only that elites influence masses more than masses influence elites. Once again, generally speaking, elitism is not a conspiracy to oppress society. It also doesn’t imply that those in power constitute a single body polity. This also doesn’t mean that the Elites in power are always in conflict with the masses and always desire self-interested goals at the expense of the public interest. All this means is that the decisions and direction are controlled by the elite. In the end elitism implies that public policy does not always reflect the demands of the people so much as it reflects the interests and values of Elites. This also means any change in policy or direction only occurs when, and if, the elites redefine their own values as well as what they value. And while the general attitude of an elite group is it is that it is always in their best interest to preserve the institutions and the systems, that doesn’t mean that public sentiment can’t affect a change in their attitudes and beliefs which can modify the existing systems. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that last sentence reflects that most changes tend to be incremental rather than revolutionary.

Which leads me to the economic elite.

It would seem like the main distinction between Elites and 99% is based primarily on control over the economic resources of society. This means that industrial and financial leaders compose a major part of the elite. This has been true since the dawn of time. Industrialization pooled extreme wealth creation and made a few men spectacularly wealthy. From there it became a short leap for the economic elite to believe they, rather than the government, should direct the country’s development. With that I offer a quick historical lesson from Heather Cox Richardson:

In June 1889, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie published what became known as the “Gospel of Wealth” in the popular magazine North American Review. Carnegie explained that “great inequality…[and]…the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few” were “not only beneficial, but essential to…future progress.” And, Carnegie asked, “What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few?”

Rather than paying higher wages or contributing to a social safety net—which would “encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy,” Carnegie wrote—the man of fortune should “consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer…in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.”

At the source of economic success attitudes and beliefs resides the fact America has never lacked for anything. This creates a sense of infinite abundance and a lack of appreciation, or respect of, of any scarcity. One of the consequences of this attitude/belief is that the ‘masses’ are continually drawn to ‘possibilities’ which, as a counterweight, simultaneously increases the likelihood of despair when possibilities are not attained. All of that said. We need to remind ourselves that the technology industrial machinery are solely instruments and it is people who are the true source of America’s power. Today there is tier of technocrats, business autocrats and inherited wealth who make up a more significant portion of the elite. In fact. Recently we recorded the first instance where inheritance, not entrepreneurship, has been the primary source of wealth for the majority of new billionaires. It is expected this trend will continue for the next 20 years (1000 billionaires passing an estimated $5.2 trillion on to children). The shift in the elite class will continue to accumulate wealth because we are in an economic period where market power consolidates in the hands of a few and market power has unprecedented power over governance and policy which ensures the power structure remains intact. I mention this shift only because it changes the challenges of how to break up the elite. Anyway. Circling back to an earlier comment, this is not a conspiracy within which there is some global cabal who ultimately make all of the decisions for everybody, like puppet masters, but rather they are part of a group of influential people that influence public policy and programs that impact society. And while people may be chafing on this whole concept of elite group making decisions I need to point out that the Founding Fathers of the United States were quite elite. They had elite education, elite experiences, and clearly viewed the United States not just in an isolationist or nationalist perspective, but as a nation among nations and had a very intentional international collective view. But getting back to economic elites, these economic elites – just like other elites – do not wield limitless power, they are nominally held in check by the ‘masses’ (shifting needs, wants, legitimate concerns, of the people). In fact, the process of the ‘circulation’ is often triggered by the existing elite’s ineffectiveness to meet the present problems, which effects their wealth, and new wealth ‘circulates’ into the economic elite. To be clear with regard to this group, as John Kenneth Galbraith said in A Short History of Financial Euphoria, “the relationship between intelligence and wealth is specious at best.” So, we do not always get the best and brightest simply through an economic narrative. That said. In capitalism, particularly with the advent of certain types of technology, wealth determines social status, and those possessing a disproportionate share of the capital, resources, and money to wield it all have assumed a disproportionate share of power. This inevitably creates a class bias based primarily on wealth where wealth is a fixed factor of the elites. In fact, while my information is dated, let’s say the wealthiest one-fifth of all American families hold nine out of every ten elite positions on the federal level with the next wealthiest controlling the remainder, save for a few token positions scattered among the rest.

Which leads me to experts versus elites.

I guess experts are part of the elites, but we need experts; not elites. I am not suggesting that we view those with the best qualifications and competencies as ‘the few who are chosen and everyone else is a failure and deserves to be forgotten,’ I will suggest that experts mostly get chosen because fewer people can actually do what they do – and do it well. I get that people are sick of experts, but that is misguided thinking because experts are experts for a reason. But, maybe worse, people are sick of thinking that people can actually do something they cannot do or make decisions they cannot make. The absurd overarching view becomes “a decision is a decision and anyone with common sense can make it.”

That is absurd. And, yet, that perception creates a reality in which those who truly have superior competence and excellent qualifications are treated to the unending joy of explaining why that doesn’t translate into a commodity. All this to say that we have a competency crisis at hand. If qualifications do not matter … if experience does not matter … if everything you have done is second guessed to a point of … well … nothing meaningful, then anyone and everyone is competent enough to maybe not do any job, but certainly able to make the same decisions anyone else can make. Reread that. If that doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, I do not know what will. Look. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion. And even the guy at the corner of the bar can find the right decision on occasion.

What made me include experts is that I had the unfortunate experience of listening in on Lex Fridman’s podcast with Jared Kushner. You can go on YouTube to find a couple of critiques of the podcast which outline the many lies and half-truths Mr. Kushner showcased. I’m not going to talk about that. But tucked within the podcast is a moment where Mr. Kushner physically ‘air quotes’ experts. What he espoused was that he was able to see things and think of things because he was an outsider and that the experts in particular on diplomacy and foreign policy – they just couldn’t “see things because they were, well, experts.” This is one of these insidious arguments that have a minutia of truth. Experts certainly can be blind to alternative ideas and thinking, but for the most part they’re experts because they have more experience, have seen more things, have a deeper education into the intricacies and complexity of that particular topic. While as an individual, they may have some objective blindness, within an expert group there is usually a healthy dialog and debate which leads to some fairly robust thinking. The main point of this particular little section is that the circulation of Elites was a theory developed when the Elites were aristocracy. In today’s world elites can be a number of different things or made up of a bunch of different groups – of which one can be experts. The experts who are directly involved in policy development, governance, and the development of system ideas can often be found in the Elites, but many experts reside outside of the elite category. They can range from academia, whose increased abstract knowledge may only equal decreased usable or relevant knowledge, to experts with specific specialties or skills (note: they are more likely to ease into the elite group if they are of value to the value creation of the elite). Within the circulation of Elites I would suggest that there’s a difference between expertise and expertism. Expertism is talking down from the authority of privilege and position. Expertism typically inhibits any systemic transformative adaptation and tends to maintain the institutions and the system construct of power and control. Expertise are true experts who offer us the structural knowledge who can enhance an adaptive adaptability and create the progress a society deserves.

“The theory of democracy as self-government must be understood as a myth, formula, or derivation. It does not correspond to any actual or possible social reality. It does not, however follow that the theory of democracy is without any influence on the social structure. The ruling minority always seeks to justify and legitimize its rule in part through a formula, without which the social structure would disintegrate. The positive significance of democratic theory is as a political formula of this kind.”

Which leads me to the irony of democracy (Dye and Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy) and elites.

Democracy, the construct, and traditions, are nurtured by those elites whose existence depends upon the continuation of democratic principles in the system. Democracy does not technically mean “self-government” or “government by the people,” but it does constitute a unique mechanism where there is a symbiotic relationship between the masses and the elite – one in which the elites seek to control and the masses nudge the behaviors of the elites. They are interdependent. The elites cannot ignore all realities and, yet, they can shape perceptions AND reality. That said. The elites circulate within this interdependence with an eye toward maintaining their status and control. I say that so that those of us in the 99% do not fool ourselves when elites do things that benefit us. Ultimately in any system, the responsibility for stability lies in the hands of the rulers–the elites who, “with few exceptions, have a special stake in the continuation of the system in which their privilege rests.”

“Elite theory pinpoints the central … actors. It does not tell us how much power they have with respect to any given social policy, and it does not tell us what social goals they will pursue”

It is important to remember that because it was Machiavelli who attributed fraud as an indispensable characteristic of the viable “ruler-type,” i.e., the elite. With fraud elites can continue in power by manipulating other elites and the 99%. Yeah. The elites are characterized by their ability to captivate the 99% via stories, uhm, fraud (lies).

“The useful lie serves to direct men into action and at the time create the basis of leadership”

Which leads me to my final issue with elites as they circulate themselves.

Look. I don’t begrudge the one percent their wealth or even their status. What I do have a grudge against is the system that they have crafted so that the one percent, or this group of Elites, constantly circulates itself. They’ve created a self-sustaining system within which 99% of the people cannot participate. Let me clarify that last point. 98.9% of the people cannot participate. Because that is what the circulation of Elites have crafted within their system where 99.9% of the elites constantly circulate allowing .1% to be eliminated and .1% to be added. This creates the perception that the circulation of Elites is a myth because the exceptions are highlighted as they get added. And it’s also possible that I have a grudge against this circulation of Elites because this elitism is typically not based on either social status or intellectual achievements to be able to sustain the system which allows them to exist. And therein lies ‘the rub.’ They have the most power and, yet, they do not have the most intellect to wield that power. It was Tolstoy who said that the state insured that the wicked dominated that criminals were far less dangerous than a well organized government were essentially violent forces held together by intimidation corruption and public indoctrination and, well, Galbraith said what I noted earlier. But where it becomes truly unconscionable from a society perspective is that it almost seems like the governing elite only know three things: money, propaganda, and fear. Each are not discreet in and of themselves, but a rather intricate DNA weave whirling around each other. The elite become elite by working the margins of ethics and norms when the more rules you break the more success you have. This gets compounded with a mindset where the game, i.e., where there are only winners and losers, never stops. This means that any pause for peace by the masses in the daily struggle simply becomes another opportunity for Elites to squeeze more out of the system. But maybe the worst aspect is the elites always view social problems as problems to be solved only if solving them would not reduce some dependence of a system. yeah. Sadly, there are no grand plans no grand strategies just a lust for power and an insane addictive desire to accumulate more and more because too much is never enough. And maybe that is where I end. With my disgust for the circulation of the elites.

Ponder.

“We live mythically, but continue to think fragmentarily and on single planes.”

Marshall McLuhan

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“We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything we perceive as reality is, in fact, constructed from fragments and fragmentation which, even when rationally constructed, can make life pretty confusing for the everyday person. Basically, this is a survival technique in that we grab onto some fragments to make sense of things the best we can. What becomes an existential survival crisis is WHAT fragments we grab onto. As Tony Fish suggests our root problem is that everything when framed with a maths or data mind is a decision. When framed by a psychologist or social scientist, everything becomes a choice. To someone who has authority and responsibility, or plays with complexity, everything is a judgment. Confusingly everything is an opinion to a judge. Math and data offer tantalizing fragments to judge and rationalize reality – sometimes well and sometimes not as well. That may all seem very confusing, but dependence upon different framing and beliefs, i.e., rationalizing fragments, creates some ‘life efficiency’ for each of us while simultaneously creating a brittle coherence to the community. In addition, this also tends to be reductionary. What I mean by that is inevitably this encourages us to act situationally rather than act based on scenarios. Once again, this is a reductionary life where we react as a matter of rule, work through heuristics (our rationalizing fragments) and then simply repeat the majority of our behavior, i.e., the shadows of previous decisions shine a spotlight on decision-making in the present.

Which leads me to social media’s superweapon: reinforcement learning.

Social networks are designed explicitly to command human attention and hijack free will. They are weapons of the science of persuasion and psychological vulnerabilities. Not only are algorithms designed to optimize engagement at any cost, but they triple down on that engagement through reinforcement learning – driving you down deeper and deeper into the darkness, fragment of engagement by fragment of engagement. Each step farther down into that blackness takes you farther and farther away from engaging with more meaningful, thoughtful, enlightening fragments (if not wholes). But where the reinforcement loops work hardest is by slinging endless customized content, tantalizing fragments, to captivate attention every step of the way. More and more data gets fed back into the algorithm reinforcement loops to further refine the manipulative powers and refine the ‘fragment house’ they offer as your home. It feels like a stream of consciousness when it really has little to do with your own conscious and more about fragments of consciousness some algorithm consciously teases out. Ah. But it gets a bit worse. While you feel actively engaged, you are really skimming along the top of superficial, non-demanding, fragmentation dressed up as meaningful “whole truths.” Reinforcement learning encourages you to see castles of sand as solid homes for enlightenment. And it does so deftly guiding you away from the time, and thoughtfulness, true enlightenment and understanding demands. We end up in unenlightened little fragments of cubbyholes tucked in tight with no room for any additional ideas.

Which leads me to what this means for personal identity.

Technology, through social media, aggressively attacks our identities blasting it apart in an onslaught of detailed fragments. This, in turn, makes social media & technology seem even more demanding of us, despite the fact it actually has a relatively simplistic structure (but warped by algorithms), consequently people started feeling a need that more detail was required, i.e., actually embrace the enemy. This doom loop of detail made something peculiar happen. Our identities gradually prove themselves incapable of absolute, whole, concepts. Identity simply becomes details. And, if the details aren’t coherent and well thought out, your identity simply became fragments floating out in technological space being bombarded with random algorithm driven asteroids.

As Marshall McLuhan would say we live mythically but continue to think fragmentarily and on single planes. It seems like almost all the action and reaction occurs at exactly the same time ignoring any complexity and ignoring any combinatorial consequences. So it appears that we live in the present, in some mythical way, continuing to think in the old fragmented space and time patterns. Inevitably this creates what Marshall McLuhan suggested as “the age of anxiety.”

Which leads me to unique and belonging.

Speaking of anxiety, let’s move on to uniqueness and belonging. The theory of organizational change revolves around the idea that if you cannot disturb the organizational identity filter then nothing changes. In other words, if a society wants to evolve and learn it must have the capacity for internal dialogue. Learning happens reciprocally, in context, and is vital to a thriving system. This is where diversity comes in. Diversity plays a role because it enhances community, if and only if, there is a vibrant network of relationships and if there is a free flow of information throughout. But let’s get back to uniqueness and becoming. Within lies a paradox of individuality and connectedness to un-like thinkers. The ubiquitous world of technology allows us to connect with more people, more ideas, more information. Most of it is beyond the limits of our cognitive capacity which traps us in this horrible doom loop of where does our ‘self’ begin, and where does it end (uniqueness), which leads to a doom loop of where does who I am and what I will be (becoming) begin and end. Hanzi Freinacht is the one who suggested the idea of transvidualism where the self actually contains part of the whole (fragments) which while most likely true only leads us to even more anxiety-driven questions: what does the self hold on to? Who are you? Is your reality yourself? is your identity ever just one thing but in constant motion and morphing with each interaction? I would be remiss if I didn’t point out all these questions suggest opportunities to accept our self-limitations and purposefully seek out, within the collective, ways to be part of things that are bigger than ourselves without losing are self-identity. But I imagine my larger point here is that people are increasingly a collection of fragments, some changing and some unchanging, and the proportionality of those two aspects is incredibly important in accepting ‘self,’ uniqueness, and belonging in a world with increasing fragments. And that becomes fairly important because if the increased fragmentation simply creates small-minded tribes that only generates societal friction. Arguably, tribes of equals are not always that smart mainly because they are hunkered down around a small campfire of fragments.

Which leads me to suggest the larger social issue actually resides in our misunderstanding of uniqueness and separateness and being part of a collective group.

Problems arise when uniqueness is associated with ‘being separate’ and when separateness gains a sense of faux specialness. When unique is tied to separate it tends to transform into an unhealthy sense of specialness (unique individualism) or a kind of narcissism feeding into a belief we can endlessly take from the collective without repercussion; because it feeds our isolated self in a zero-sum world. I would argue we far too often conflate uniqueness for separateness. Yeah. The truth is everything we do as ‘someone unique,’ we actually do as part of the collective whole. The paradox is we are unique because of the way we are interconnected with the rest of the humans. Yeah. Uniqueness is emergent from connection to other human beings (if not all nature). What I mean by that is each species in nature is unique, and plays a role in a vast symbiotic web of life, humans also play a role in a vast symbiotic web of humanity and society. What this means is a healthy sense of uniqueness, which begets healthy becoming, actually requires an active personal and societal strategy of deepening connections and integration of ‘fragments,’ not of separation. All that said. Ponder this. There is something odd about saying that everything is unique because this makes uniqueness something that everything has in common. Quite the contradiction to say that everything is the same insofar as everything shares in the quality of being unique, no? This is an important and sometimes mind bending contradiction, but I think it is important, especially in a fragmented world, to recognize uniqueness does not contradict some aspects of sameness because both sameness and uniqueness arise out of interconnection. Not to get too philosophical, but the universe is unique in relation to everything else, so everything in the universe is the same as everything else. I challenge everyone to take any two objects, or events, and list the ways they share common properties and qualities. This happens even if two things seemingly have nothing in common. But from a fragmented society perspective, what is truly ironic is it seems like we have a society obsessed with individualism and, yet, has little room for truly unique forms of self-expression. Despite individualism rhetoric, society (and social media) consistently denigrates our sense of self and does not allow for the formation of self reflectively unique personalities. I would argue fragments play a significant role in this. What I mean by that we have actually become quite limited (despite a ubiquitous online world) in how we can represent ourselves and others because communication has become overwhelmingly superficial through sound bites, tweets, and status updates which dominate connection platforms where we have to represent who and what we are. The superficiality is contrary to the type of reflective and prolonged engagements that truly foster uniqueness and self. Circling back to Marshall McLuhan, society seems to have an unhealthy focus on images, memes, superficial montages of misleading imagery, combined with an unnatural compression of time and space. What I mean by that is while time has not sped up, we actually treat time as fragments in which we use or are lost. All of this simply generates shallow forms of communication and understanding and, ultimately, differences (not uniqueness) which inevitably does not meet the true depth and nuance of uniqueness. Just as a reminder, this matters because personal clarity demands we seek places or people that remove doubts and obstacles about who and what we are. Self is an integrated image of oneself as a unique person and if we are only integrating the superficial into our self-feedback system, well, we will inevitably end up being shallow people desperately, and continuously, seeking meaning.

“The study of a situation should not seek to control the parts, or even the whole, but rather discover the underlying patterns which make up the aspects of potential.”

Which leads to me to a system that encourages fragmentation.

While its easy to point to technology, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out culture, or the overarching system itself, almost encourages fragmentation. What I mean by that is market-based capitalism emphasizes individual choice, competition, and zero-sum thinking, and the collective intelligence that arises from different choices. All that sounds good, or maybe okay, but it tends to create societies that are purposeless and fragmented and individual based (or collaboration is only seen as a necessary means to further self success), or as Arthur van den Bruck said, “gives everyone the freedom to be a mediocre man.” Yeah. Capitalism actually encourages mediocrity. Okay. How about over time the arc of capitalism bends toward mediocrity. The system is in a constant conflict by what stands and what changes, what’s bounded what is not, and how the existing power structure stratifies or doesn’t. what that means is while it often doesn’t appear like it, the system is mutually emergent; not unidirectional. And what that means is the reality is there is always a bit of resistance against the destructive fragmenting and destabilizing aspects of capitalism’s trappings. But the system encourages many people, under the guise it increases likelihood of success, to encourage individualism, alienation (zero-sum competition), fragmentation, entrepreneurial innovation, and all the things that discourage collective action which would actually force some change or at least challenge the existing power structure. Circling back to Tony Fish, maths and numbers and data are the primary weapon the system wields to encourage fragmentation (to the benefit of those in power). It is a daunting to challenge the fragmented system and society (which is monopolistic institutionally) because the system encourages individuality seeking to fragment any significant collective/community because it is actually ONLY a collective/community who can destruct an existing system and create a new one and those in power know that. That said. Beyond the increased emphasis on ‘self,’ the system almost encourages us to confuse, and conflate, what is ordinary and what is exceptional – for each individual (thereby confusing uniqueness, separateness and becoming). Sure. The system celebrates individuals, but typically not the ones who consistently invest in the greater good, more typically the economic successes. The truth is the economic narrative encourages fragmentation by encouraging everyone to believe individual successes begets collective progress. That is an incredibly flawed premise. Progress is never linear and is almost always asymmetrical and is optimized through collective action; not individual action. Lastly. The weird thing is the current system almost encourages pettiness and small-minded thinking in its facilitation of fragmentation and use of fragments, but that is another piece for another day.

“there is no ‘right time’ there is just time and what you choose to do with it”

Which leads me to connectivity and connections.

It may seem odd to end a piece on fragments with connectivity, but hear me out. Fragmentation is here to stay. We can try and wish away all the structural and transactional aspects of the larger system and society that enables fragments and fragmentation, but it’s just wishful thinking. Our efforts should be directed at educating people on how to enhance connectivity and reward communities and connections, in other words, learn to use fragments well. I have argued in the past that fractals, small linear components of a larger complex system, is where insights reside. I believe the same is true in a large, fragmented, complex society. While the blur of fragments and fragmentation encourage us to believe everything is vague and tenuous, the truth is connections and connectivity is what tethers us to sanity, community and meaning. It is within the experiences of connection which shapes us (even though we may not notice the actual shaping). Our self-identity, and ‘becoming,’ is the ultimate result of a complex series of steps, choices, and experiences over a long period of time. But, possibility, my larger point is collaboration, which is the outcome of connectivity, is just a means to an end and if the end justifies that means then you do what the end desires, not what you think is the right way to do something. Ultimately, people flow to ideas when the idea needs people. And maybe that is where fragments, in today’s world, are truly failing us. If fragments had the opportunity to flow freely and coalesce into grander ideas that benefit societal progress, I believe we would all be applauding a fragmented world because we were actually flowing to ideas that permit society to prosper – as a whole, not just individually. But that’s not the way its working. Fragments are actually driving us into smaller and smaller people and a smaller and smaller society. Ponder.

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

Simon & Garfunkel

What if we can no longer hear the machines?

I thought about this the other day when someone suggested over the past years people have become more aware of algorithms and their effect. I answered that there was a difference between awareness and understanding. Anyway. Technology has certainly been impacting society, and the individuals within, for centuries, but this particular generation of technology and machines seems to be having a deeper impact on both society and the individuals within.

Which leads me what I believe is happening.

In the past we always had some warning, i.e., the ominous sounds of the machines bearing down upon us or pounding on our ears. The new machines are silent. No warnings. Divested of sound our anxiety has no source. This means that history and the future simultaneously become unseen, unpredictable, and unfolding with no forewarning as to what is to come. This would suggest without warning we fall into the wretched hollow in between stimulus and response. That hollow matters because, typically, we select a from several possibilities which vary contextually from place to place and time to time, but bereft of some important cues which would not only help identify not only the appropriate response but to help identify the parameters of the place and time, we skate on the superficial surface of algorithms feeding our worst instincts and tendencies, uhm, not our best stuff to lean in on.

Which leads me to the superficial surface of human instincts.

The reality is that technology can be quite human-like, but never quite human. Technology, at best, simply mimics humans and human societies. This is dangerous if we become dependent upon technology to help us define how to act as humans and what a human society should look like. Unlike ants and bees and any other non-human animal (which acts off genetics codes) we attempt to find cues for the rules of a human society through the uncomfortable participation in connection with other humans. This has been true for generations. Writing letters, telephoning, emails, and now things like Facebook and Instagram simply augment human interaction. In fact, one could guess that all those types of communication probably only work as well as they do because they augment all the ordinary interaction that goes on at the same time. The reality is letter writing, telephoning, even emailing, is low depth communication. High depth communication includes smelling, touching, tasting, and enough visual definition to be able to see facial expressions and body language. That’s important when thinking about stealthy algorithms because we should always remind ourselves that societies are formed and maintained through people physically interacting with each other. That doesn’t mean that as time goes by, and the physical connections have become established within the societal infrastructure, that an increase in proportion of interactions can take place without face-to-face human interaction. But. As someone said about the internet: people don’t see each other, but only what the software shows them. This creates an ambiguity between what is human and what is just human-like. What are actual images of people and what are constructed images of people. And that is important because if you believe that it is people who form societies and it is through their complex interactions within which the basis of society is formed then whether you are dealing with constructed images or reality makes a significant difference.

Which leads me to patients and impatience. Algorithms are infinitely patient while humans are finitely impatient. Years ago, Jaron Lanier warned us that algorithms didn’t attempt to change us immediately but rather through relentless nudging fractions of a percentage at a time. Algorithms patiently nudge us slowly bending the arc of our beliefs and attitudes. They prowl within human impatience seeking opportunities to not just bend the arc, but to shift one’s reality. It is within this soundless subtlety where the true danger lurks unseen, unheard and unnoticed. How dangerous and how unnoticed? I still have conversations with people in the advertising business, a business whose premised structure is nudging people’s beliefs and attitudes to affect behavior, that the 2016 election voting was affected by Russia and algorithms and Bots. I often wonder if people in advertising with true experience of how people’s minds can be affected don’t understand how algorithms work or they can affect people, how the general public can grasp the concept. Its subtlety is vast and relentless and patient. As Noah Smith just noted in a piece on TikTok and Chinese ownership: “overall, the pattern is unmistakable — every single topic that the CCP doesn’t want people to talk about is getting suppressed on TikTok.” And therein lies the subtlety. Its not that algorithms just highlight content; they simultaneously suppress content thereby implying less importance (or even less true). Yeah. Salience matters (for good and bad stuff).

Which leads me to the silence in equilibrium.

Many systems have equilibrium points, but there is a wide variety of types of equilibrium and, in fact, most systems have multiple equilibrium points. Uhm. But what if we cannot ever see them, or sense them, or, worse, be encouraged to believe one is there when it is not?  Its fairly easy to sense the possible dissonance one would feel in life if they constantly embraced a false equilibrium day after day. That person would constantly be at odds with, well, reality. That is, in my mind, the outcome of the sounds of violent silence. Ponder.

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“Not only are you responsible for serving your community, but you are partly responsible for there being any community to serve.”

Mary Parker Follett

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“In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the industrialization of England accelerated at such a pace that historians have found no term adequate to describe it save one usually reserved for violent political change – revolution.”

Leuchtenburg, Perils of Prosperity

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Ah. Technocrats. This is a companion piece to “circulation of elites” just that this time I am focusing on technology and monopolistic technology autocrats who think of themselves as the elites to guide us all to a better future. Now. The bible of how technocrats have hijacked capitalism is Technopoly by Neil Postman, but the concept of technocracy can be traced to William Henry Smyth, a California engineer, who introduced the term “technocracy” in his 1919 article titled “Technocracy – Ways and Means to Gain Industrial Democracy,” which was published in the Journal of Industrial Management (Corporate Finance Industry). Anyway.  Technocrats not only have an odd view of capitalism, but of society in general. Generally speaking, they have an inordinate dislike of constraints which only encourages technological advancement without any constraints, or any real moral boundaries, as they believe the market will naturally sort itself out.  That is a dangerously naive thought. As Leo Marx said:

“The simple republican formula for generating progress by directing improved technical means to societal ends was imperceptibly transformed into a quite different technocratic commitment to improving ‘technology’ as the basis and the measure of — as all but constituting — the progress of society.”

The technocrats play an interesting game. They say just enough reasonable things to suggest maybe they are doing something good for all of us, and they even use some key enlightenment ideals without really understanding enlightenment. What I mean by that Is they tend to think of reason without any real boundaries. It is almost like they embrace Foucault’s nihilism. Rather than the philosophical ideas that are central to progressive society like a commitment to universalism over tribalism, firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress (Susan Neiman), this generation of technocrats tend to look at these ideas as disconnected rather than connected. In other words, progress above all even at the expense of universalism and justice. Their reason is justified by outcomes, not process and they tend to believe that all technological progress is good. This leads to a belief because they are forces of ‘good’ that their power should be unconstrained. Yeah. Its unconstrained technology development combined with unconstrained power. Ultimately this version of technocrat doesn’t really see monopolies, just ‘scale.’ That trickster nuance leads this merry band of technocrats down a path where business is more important than, well, anything (because they believe the business ‘serves for good of society’) and they see their redesigning of society as simply reengineering humanity (without tending to humanity’s needs).

• ** note: there is a significant difference between reengineering and redesigning. The former is simply reshaping the system and structure that exists, i.e., simply propagating an already existing flawed construct; the latter actually demands a vision to build toward, i.e., design something new and have technology enable it.

This can get a bit worse. Similar to the originators of the world wide web (most of which have reflectively accepted their naivete) they still view the limitless flow of information as a net positive for society and humanity. This includes limitless information flow to and from what their ultimate objective – computer intelligence which surpasses people’s. Their vision is all encompassing in that it envisions an entire system, an infrastructure in other words, to undergird everyone – regardless of (a) whether humanity has the capacity to absorb the limitless flow of information in any meaningful way, and (b) all will be equally empowered to take advantage of this new system. They seem to ignore, well, lots of things. But they mostly tend to ignore how power and control and information/knowledge pools. Maybe that is so because they see the existing pooling benefiting them and they see some undemocratic view of the world where a weird meritocracy is generated – weird in that it truly isn’t the best of the best, but rather simply the best at taking advantage of the system.

They are reengineering society, but just to be clear, they do so in the pursuit of scale and profit over safety concerns and public accountability. But maybe what should concern us most is HOW they seek to reengineer. Its not just that their objectives are a bit naïvely dangerous, but they also are crafting a structure of numbers and measurements (its kind of an extension of a belief that machines are the future so the way the future should be shaped is in machine terms).  They are shaking the entire etch-a-sketch of society and they don’t care if any of the sand is lost while shaking. They have a structured ideology of mathematical measurement to justify anything and everything. It’s a warped vision of even the warped Taylorism that got us to where we are today. It is almost like we are being led by an illiterate group of people in that their only literacy is in numbers, scale and machine technology wrapped in a loose, but extreme, libertarian etch-a-sketch. They weave webs of ‘progress’ under the guise of numbers – usage, engagement, and views – while ignoring whether those individual usages, engagements & views, are actually good for human beings. “It will all sort out” and “scale flattens negative affects” represents the technocrat mantra. They ignore the relationships between morality (what is good) and the power of the tools they are crafting. Once again, if you squint hard enough what they say seems reasonable, but stop squinting and it all becomes a blur of dangerously unconstrained technological innovations and systems. They will claim they are not doing this, but they are sacrificing progress for humanity and society for a hollowed out, but profitable, progress in business (because they see their ‘business’ as not really a business but a societal infrastructure development – for which they get paid for). I say all that so we can stop being surprised by the horrible existing leadership. They have no vision for what they are creating. They are just creating things assuming a vision will emerge from their technological wizardry. The past is all unworthy of consideration (even the important things of the past), they believe the future will be shaped not through some grand strategy but rather by chasing things – at exponential scale/pace – that seem beneficial, and numbers become proof of performance (note: numbers are not people). All of this is done rather than creating and sustaining a substantive healthy society.

Yeah. I know their arguments. Their entire argument revolves around “it is because of technology lives have dramatically improved.” The problem is that immediately veers into a warped unconstrained development with “if you restrain any development, imagine what you are costing humanity.” Yeah. Its technological development no matter what. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something I pointed out in my “will of the institution’ piece. Business over the past 100 years has encouraged everyone, all workers, to view business in a religious sense – “business is the savior for not only you – your family – btu society in total. Technocrats simply warp that idea (an idea I would note has had incredibly negative repercussions to human psyche, meaning, life purpose and even the nuclear family) to an exponentially existential level – technology is THE hope for a better future. It absolves them of any moral clarity and suggests we, the people, would benefit by hedging our moral bets. To be clear, this isn’t anything they actually say out loud, but, similar to the robber barons of the past who argued they are beneficial to society, they will not say this shit. This means we cannot rely on some grand sense of business responsibility or moral clarity from these technocrats as they pursue unconstrained ambitions.

Which leads me to how their ambitions get conflated with freedom.

Throughout the technology world we hear endless talk of individual freedom, yet, there has never been such pressure for conformity from the market itself. I don’t mean capitalism, but rather when wealth is the objective, the peoples reduce their ambitions to speculation over reason – albeit we label it as being reasonable. In fact, technocrats depend on the masses to have blind faith in the value of reason while, if we are honest, it is simply speculative thinking at the moment (it sounds possibly reasonable with benefits, with no probabilities attached to the possibilities nor penalties). Reason sifts into every dimension of social life and technology is the tool of ‘reason.’ Reason becomes how we administrate a confusing life (and the sense of impending crisis), which means moral forces get kicked to the side. We become directionless other than that which technology wrought. Bereft of true sensemaking and morality, we plod along at the speed of technology. And technocrats endorse that vision through their ambitions.

If technocrats get their way, we will become a society of immense technological power where people will increasingly dwell in a world of illusion, or delusions, comforted by tribes of likeminded dwellers. Well. That’s what I believe. This isn’t to suggest that increased information flow to more people isn’t a good thing because it does inevitably increase the general knowledge of the population, but it comes with some problems if that information isn’t constrained in some ways and continues being delivered in its firehose way. Anyway. The only universality is not humanity and justice, but simply the ubiquitous reach of technology. Technocratic planning is simply an extension of the existing corrupted industrialization thinking – just on exponential steroids. The truth is the technocrat ultimately, sees economics as the sole measurement and technology is the material with which to build these economies. They see their private advantages as things which will inevitably ‘trickle down’ to public good. Its just a different, but equally horrible, version of trickle-down economics. Industrialization is, and has always been, a system to maximize material welfare. Technocrats may twist this truth as they discuss enhancing the brain, optimizing the body’s potential and any number of human enhancing features, but they do so with the objective to increase productivity and wealth. Technology is certainly only increasing its role in the weave of lives, personal and professional, and the general infrastructure of how life is lived. There is no lack of technology ‘plenty.’ But one should reflect upon the harsh truth that nothing cuts deeper to a society, or any business in fact, then the unhealthy relationship between ‘want’ amid ‘plenty.’ Technocrats cannot envision anyone ‘wanting’ in the future when the reality is, unless constrained in some key ways, while technology will be plenty, plenty of people will end up ‘wanting’ for something other than technology. I will say that the one thing the technocrats are clearly right on is ‘technological driven future is inevitable.’ Technology will only become more and more ubiquitous in our lives; often in some fairly invasive ways. Some of the issues this creates cannot be ignored and, I would argue, should be resolved before we go off to the technological races (this is an excellent conversation between Yuval Hari and Mustafa Suleyman, a cautionary pessimist and a reality-based optimist, on some of the issues at hand). We shouldn’t cast aside the machines, but we should view them as reasonable tools for progress, not unreasonable replacements of humanity. Technology has certainly revolutionized how we do things, but inevitably humans decide what to do. I fear technocrats want technology to decide what humans want to do. And maybe that is where I will end. With technocrats’ stronger belief in technology than in humans. This is important because, well, let us remember Mary Parker Follett’s words: Not only are you responsible for serving your community, but you are partly responsible for there being any community to serve. Ponder.

” Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. “

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

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“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

Montesquieu

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“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Antonio Gramsci

The world is obviously changed, most obviously with 24/7 communication, either through television and radio or through the internet, all bludgeoning our cognitive limits. It’s not a simple world, even though the modes of communication are relatively simple to identify. It creates a labyrinth of connections far more complex than our cognitive capabilities. In addition, lurking within is a mosaic of filthy little self-indulgent self-interests constantly being tweaked by nasty little intentional 24/7 external nudges. Within this mosaic of alternative realities bombarding us mentally, we are enduring the crush of reality. This crush manufactures individual internal worlds which makes it difficult to remember, or even identify, who we are as our inner villains (doubts, insecurities, envy, ambition) find multiple things to pay attention to and engage with. Inevitably under the crush we retreat to entertain, and fight, these inner villains. The victim in this is imagination. With that in mind, I would argue the disappearance of imagination is creating one of the greatest obstacles to creating our future. I would even argue this is the crisis because it is the crisis that underpins all the solutions to any other crisis. And while the disappearance of imagination may appear far far smaller in scale than many of the existential crises (the polycrisis issue) that we face, it is actually the disappearance of imagination which strips us of everything, and anything, we might actually be able to use to discover a world in which solutions, progress and prosperity thrives.

“We should create our life as one creates a dream.”

Victor Hugo

Which leads me to Infinity.

It is within imagination where we can bring forth potential lightness from existing darkness. To that point, I need to say darkness is finite. What I mean by that is it reduces everything to what is close at hand, or we can possibly dimly be seen in the shadows. We, humans, create this darkness because we struggle to face the muchness of the infinite, yet, it is within the infinite within which we can find the solutions to some of the finite issues we currently face. It is within infinite where those who imagine have the opportunity to convince the rest of us to envision better futures and possibly even to rediscover what is important within ourselves. Circling back to the inner villain thought, for the majority of the people as they try to fend off the infinite, they seek out finite realities – and there are a shitload of them. Rather than imagine things, you go to Instagram and search what feels like an infinite amount of images. Rather than use your imagination, you visit Twitter to face what appears to be an infinite amount of opinions, facts, and versions of events. Reality becomes situational; not what can be imagined. Reality becomes finite pragmatism; not infinite possibilities. No matter how diverse our interests, values, dreams, and hopes are they are constantly being squeezed into some logic the Internet, in 24/7 information feeds, offer us. It is a constant menu of concrete so you can replace the abstract. Imagination and infinite possibilities get sacrificed at the altar of pragmatic realities. That creates a depressingly unspectacular vision of what could be and in fact it simply becomes a race to the rationalization bottom. To be clear, I am not suggesting people are passive nor complacent or even sheep in a capitalistic world, what I am suggesting is an increasingly aggressive multiple reality world is playing an increasing role in the process of suggesting “why waste time on imagination when you can find a reality at any given point.” To be clear you cannot imagine a dream, or an envisioned positive state, without engaging with reality. You cannot design a future without materials and, pragmatically speaking, the materials you have in the present are the ones you have to use.

Which leads me to say we need an imagination revolution.

Revolution is a compliment to an idea. That being said, there are more ideas floating around in today’s world then is probably good for us, and we are being crushed by multiple ideas of multiple realities. In any case, true rebels, or revolutionaries, are rare exceptions in the world. There are certainly a large number of people claiming to be revolutionaries and taking some fairly extreme stances, but for the most part they are simply loudmouths, charlatans and jesters. So let me suggest where a revolution should occur in today’s world. It should be happening in the battle between the positive world and the negative reality; the idealists and the realists, and the tug of war of ideas in the space in-between. Why? The people within these realities are either mired in despair or blissfully ignorant in their positivity. Mindfulness, positive thinking, “if you can believe it, it will come true,” are all characteristics of a reality of people detached from the pragmatism of a reality made up of a mosaic of challenges and opportunities. Alternatively, the despair reality is willing to engage with the world, but for the most part they do so by rummaging in the past to resurrect a false reality of what was good in the past. The imagination revolutionary recognizes that the negative is inseparable from the production of the positive and it is within this combination that we can possibly determine a future in which everyone can thrive. The imagination revolutionary actually embraces a version of ‘creative destruction.’ What I mean by that is that once new ideas, that enough people value, are introduced into the culture – either negative or positive reality – the surrounding environment will modify and adapt itself according to the needs of these new ideas. Along the way these new conditions will inevitably be fatal to some of the existing ideas – even the ones that have been historically resilient. Yeah. Imagination doesn’t reside in the intellectual forest of ancient trees, but rather they recognize how forests can be grown. Yeah. Imagination is in the growth business.

Which leads me to end with an important reminder.

The enemy of imagination, and imagination revolutionaries, is certainly finiteness and rationalization.

In fact, one of the consequences of a rationalization reality constructed by industrialization is that imagination has become ‘something to do.’ What I mean by that is that imagination has been replaced by innovation pipelines, blue sky thinking, and any number of constructed tasks to be deployed with a specific objective in mind. They become singular expressions of imaginative imagination when imagination should be embodied within an infinite thought and the pursuit of infiniteness. Yeah. That’s a problem in today’s milestone/KPI/achievement obsessed world., but the essence of the imagination is located precisely in its improbability. In a probabilistic, finite-driven, rationalizing, world that is a challenge. That is why we need imagination revolutionaries who hold imagination high as the idea, and ideal, around which an imagination revolution can occur and a better future can not only be envisioned, but constructed. Ponder.